Details on hospital deal slow to emerge

Thursday

Jan 24, 2013 at 8:41 PM

BATON ROUGE — Without going into specifics, state health officials told lawmakers Thursday that uncertainty over money has caused some personnel and medical students at public hospitals such as Leonard J. Chabert Medical Center in Houma to look elsewhere for employment and training.

Jeremy AlfordCapitol Correspondent

BATON ROUGE — Without going into specifics, state health officials told lawmakers Thursday that uncertainty over money has caused some personnel and medical students at public hospitals such as Leonard J. Chabert Medical Center in Houma to look elsewhere for employment and training. Overall, more than 1,300 public hospital employees statewide left their jobs after Congress decided to reduce Louisiana’s Federal Medical Assistance Percentage rate in July of last year, LSU System executive vice president Dr. Frank Opelka said. Since then, however, the Houma medical center has reached agreements with Ochsner Health System and Terrebonne General Medical Center to stay afloat. But lawmakers didn’t get answers during a meeting of the House Health and Welfare Committee as to how many years the agreements will span, how much money the private hospitals will be investing and how the poor and uninsured will be served under the new framework. “Those are ongoing dialogues,” Opelka said. Still, Department of Health and Hospitals Secretary Bruce Greenstein said officials are trying to fast-track the agreements at Chabert, as well as others in Lafayette, Lake Charles and New Orleans. Final agreements could be outlined in early summer, he said, possibly June or July, compared to the earlier goal of a spring announcement. Moving forward, local interests can stop fretting over a potential sale of the hospitals, which has not been “part of the discussion we have had and is not part of our vision for the future,” Greenstein added.He said the LSU Board of Supervisors will ultimately have the final say over the agreements, not the Legislature, although regional lawmakers have said in the past they hope to play some sort of oversight role. “For the time being, the mission here is to stabilize clinical services,” Opelka said, adding that services should grow in the long run. As for Chabert’s medical education program, Opelka said it is possible students may have been attracted to out-of-state residencies before the planned agreements with Ochsner and Terrebonne General were announced last month.He described any losses as a “slight bump” that would correct itself with increases in the coming years as more students are drawn to the new system. “We will have the best and brightest coming from other states,” he said. “We will be pulling from Stanford (University) and (Johns) Hopkins (University).”In addition to the agreements in Houma, the Interim LSU Hospital and its successor, University Medical Center in New Orleans, has agreed to partner with Louisiana Children’s Medical Center, while University Medical Center in Lafayette has formed a partnership with its neighbor, Lafayette General Medical Center.Within the past week, officials also announced that W.O. Moss Regional Medical Center in Calcasieu Parish could be turned over to Lake Charles Memorial Hospital and West Calcasieu Cameron Hospital.When the federal reductions were first announced last summer, Chabert Medical Center’s cut was pegged at $14.3 million with 245 layoffs.The agreements with Ochsner Health System and Terrebonne General Medical Center have delayed those layoffs, which equate to about 25 percent of the staff. Some lawmakers questioned why any staffing changes would be needed if the planned agreement is as efficient as the administration promises.“If the hospital already has a full staff to take care of patients,” said Rep. H. Bernard Lebas, D-Ville Platte, “I don’t see why they would necessarily need to hire any more.”So far, employees have heard a positive take on the situation from health officials and have only been told that they will have to re-apply for their positions. “Our partners are very keen on trying to keep all of those employees within the partnership because they actually provide a big and important aspect of the clinical care we deliver,” Opelka said.When lawmakers asked about Louisiana’s refusal to participate in the expansion of Medicaid under President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which Democrats and others argue would soften the blow, House Health and Welfare Chairman Scott Simon, R-Abita Springs, discouraged the questions, promising they would be addressed in another upcoming hearing.